TAG: Medicalisation of everyday life

The beginning of February saw the launch of an ambitious document aiming to offer a new way of thinking about human distress. The Power Threat Meaning Framework (published by the British Psychological Society) emphasises the role of adverse experiences in emotional suffering. The PTMF also offers an alternative to more traditional psychiatric diagnostic categories. The panel discuss the how useful the document may be, and some of the criticisms which have been made of it.

In 2000 I made a short documentary about being in state care as a child. The response from the Australian government was to threaten me with legal action. I was scared because they’d nearly killed me in care. So I stopped talking about it. Fifteen years later, in 2015, I gave evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Over five years the Commission held 8,013 private sessions with survivors, and heard evidence from another 1,200 witnesses in 400 public hearings. I learnt that there were thousands of others who shared my distress. I learnt that what had been done to us was criminal, that we were powerless, and that child rape destroys children. I realised all this, and I was furious, because in 22 years of therapy these things had never been recognised.

This week John McGowan discusses whether trying to eliminate suicide entirely is a possibility or even a helpful aim.

This week’s podcast is recording of a public lecture given in our new base in Tunbridge Wells. In this talk (delivered in December 2017) our Academic Director John McGowan considers the ‘Zero Suicide’ initiative and the strengths and weaknesses of assertive suicide prevention approaches. As well as the talk, the recording features a range of contributions from the audience.

Someone asked me what I thought about Donald Trump the other day. I was about to give a fairly obvious reply when the earnest tone and questioning look made me pause. As the penny dropped I realised I wasn’t being asked my opinion as a person, I was being asked what I thought as a psychologist. Did I think the US president was mentally unwell and thus not fit for the office he holds?

It’s just over a month until the UK general election and many Brits seem to have lost trust in their traditional politicos. Whether it’s the UK Independence Party (UKIP) scapegoating the European Union and immigrants, a rise in nationalism (the Scottish National party), or Russell Brand’s teenage anarchism, faith in facile, and sometimes ugly, solutions is on the march. It’s a huge relief, therefore, to hear that the editors of the DSM (the main reference book for psychiatric classification), are considering a new category of disorder to cover this condition. Clearly many critical things have been said about the burgeoning amount of psychiatric diagnosis, here and elsewhere. However, I’ve just looked at the DSM draft entry (reproduced below), and think that this time, the American Psychiatric Association might really be onto something. In fact, all I can say is bring it on.